It’s unlikely Donald Trump will be planning to visit the UK any time soon. He might not get labelled as an “undesirable person” by the British government, as was the Islamophobic Dutch politician, Geert Wilders. Even so, since more than half a million Britons have already made it clear he’s unwelcome, I doubt that Trump would accept having to face the humiliation of seeking consent to travel to the country viewed by most Americans as the United States’ closest ally — a trip that in other circumstances doesn’t even require a visa.
The New York Times reports:
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, has revoked Mr. Trump’s status as a business ambassador to Scotland, and Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen has stripped him of an honorary degree.
Prime Minister David Cameron, of the Conservative Party, castigated Mr. Trump’s position [on Muslims] as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong,” while J. K. Rowling, the author of the best-selling Harry Potter books, described Mr. Trump as worse than the series’ archvillain, Lord Voldemort.
Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative Party candidate for mayor of London, called Mr. Trump “repellent” and “one of the most malignant figures in modern politics,” according to news reports.
Trump has already cancelled a trip to Israel after having been criticized by Benjamin Netanyahu, while the Washington Post’s “Right Turn” Israel-friendly columnist, Jennifer Rubin, says Trump is “now is effectively a persona non grata” in the Jewish state.
It’s worth noting that Trump had already alienated himself from Jewish and Christian Zionists by refusing to express his commitment to Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital.”
Trump is also now the target of a new campaign launched by activist hackers in Anonymous, which warned the presidential candidate, “think twice before you speak anything,” while claiming to have taken down the website for Trump Tower in New York City.
And in an effort to weaken Trump’s position in the business community, a new petition has been launched to “dump Trump” from the PGA Tour.
Will any of this have much impact on Trump’s supporters?
Certainly not those of the variety to whom Olivia Nuzzi spoke:
James “Owen” Greeson said it so casually that it almost didn’t sound strange.
He was talking about how, at 76 years old, he’s never picked a winner, has always thrown his weight behind some presidential candidate who’s got no shot. This time was no different, but he didn’t much care. He sent $2,700 from Georgia, where he lives, to Donald Trump’s campaign coffers, just because he likes the guy and thinks he’s entertaining, not because he figured he could be president. It’s not that Trump isn’t fit for the office or too divisive to get the votes. “Come on,” he said, “they’ll kill him before they let him be elected.”
He meant it literally.
“George Wallace was shot,” he said, by way of explanation. And in case I wasn’t convinced, “Huey Long was shot.
“If you get too popular, you’re gonna get dusted off, you know? That should be Donald’s biggest concern, that somebody busts a cap in his ass.”
Greeson, calm and soft spoken, was already sure that the government had orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, so what was one more death, really?
“It looked like a false flag to me, come on!” he said. “Two buildings burn like that? There’s been fires in other countries that burned for 15 hours and the buildings didn’t collapse.” (He said he wasn’t sure who did 9/11, but that Dick Cheney was a good guess.)
After Donald Trump announced, on Monday, a plan to stop Muslims from entering the U.S. “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” I set out to talk to his donors about how it made them feel. I’d interviewed Trump donors before and found that above all else, they are quite a lot like the candidate himself. They aren’t all crazy or hateful or prone to shouting, necessarily, but they are fed up and they are politically incorrect. They feel as if the world and the country is changing too rapidly for us to understand it, and they resent being told that their questions are impolite or emblematic of a deeper intolerance. They see in Trump someone who would protect their interests the way he has protected his own, someone who would make a “yuge,” great deal for their benefit, perhaps. Like, really, really great. Big league.
So far, Trump’s success has not been achieved in spite of making enemies, but on the contrary, in large part it’s because he is so good at riling up his opponents. By co-opting the services of the media, his campaign has cost him virtually nothing and the criticisms he now faces, mostly have the effect of reinforcing the convictions of his base.
